how does the counting system work?
i understand counters and stuff, but sometimes i hear things like 한순간 (mostly in songs, if that makes a difference) and things like that, as opposed to 순간 한개 (or whatever the correct counter is) which is what i've learned. it's easy to translate but when speaking korean, how do you decide which to use?

Question

Answer

한순간 moment
순간 한개 1 minute
I'm not sure

Answer

As Minjin pointed out, 한 in 한순간 only means a very short period of time.
so 한순간 means a short moment of execution without a pause.

I'd say you cannot count 순간 in Korean.
I believe it's somewhat analogous to the usage of the 'one moment' in English.
'one moment' only means a short period of time,
and people do not count moment as in 'two moments' or 'three moments'.

To wrap up, 한 in 한순간 isn't really counting anything.
And for the things that you can count, what you learned is correct.

You will come up with expressions like '한성질 한다' -성질(character). / '한칼에 베다'.. etc.
In each cases, '한' is not counting '성질' or '칼'.

Answer

I think that 한순간 just refers to a short period of time. For example, In English, 'one moment' means 'wait a second', not moment 한 개.

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